The heat could be felt across the street like the sun on a cold winter day. Everyone was scurrying this way and that as I approached. Broken beer bottles littered the ground and 
crunched as I stepped forward to get a better angle through the scrub-brush trees. Obscenities rattled out like a kettle drum. The language was garbled, though and muted through the roar of the fire. A man, picking up objects hurled them at a woman through the back door, screaming something. All the while the house was burning a path to heaven. Would she not come out? Was the man trying to kill her? I couldn’t tell. The men standing next to me yelled for her to get out of the home as if that would help with some enraged beast throwing plates and pieces of burnt building at her. The tragedy of losing those plastic, dollar general serving trays was more than they could bear. It’s all they had.
The word was, that she fell asleep with a cigarette on the sofa, that he tried to put it out, and the entire place exploded in flame. I have my doubts. There was something sinister. When is there not something sinister at those rentals? Sinister was in the fine print of the contracts. Oh, hell, they probably don’t even have contracts for leasing there. Give me some cash. Here’s the key. Don’t burn it down. I assume that’s the general rental conversation. And, these tenants couldn’t even manage that. Nor could the one’s that lit a 
different unit on fire two weeks ago. Broken glass and burning rage, and upside-down peace signs. Or maybe it was a tilted Mercedes, their dream car. Hard to say. But that car that was out front had to be pushed aside because it probably hadn’t started in a year.
The firemen finally arrived. 15 minutes? 20 minutes? Not the quickest response, though I must say it was a sleepy, cold day and who wants to be out in that? Let the place burn. It’s probably worth more torched and blackened. That one brave fireman did run out and he was ready to save whoever was in that ramshackle. He began to break down the front door when a management type ran up and told the guy it’s just cats inside. Leave ‘em.
